How to Deal with Obscure Problems on UNIX

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <7220:Nov1408:26:4390 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:

>I make sure that all error messages in my programs are documented.

What about the ones you get back from perror() that you might not
know about when you write the program?  The "not a typewriter"
message that you get from calling perror after a successful stdio
operation to a file is probably the classic, but displaying the
"Multihop attempted" message you might get on a system with RFS
could be equally confusing out of context.

BTW, my all-time favorite error message comes from the AT&T starlan
network listen program.  It displays it on the console and puts it
in the log file as it dies:
  "Software bug -- should not happen"

Yes, it happens... (but only on one of several nearly identical machines).

Les Mikesell
  les at chinet.chi.il.us